An online petition has been created at “We the People” to gather support against the new FAA policy to begin charging for downloads for charts and navigational products. The Aeronautical Navigational Products Directorate (Aeronav), which currently makes the latest charts and other navigational products available online for free, says it has to recover the costs associated with developing and hosting the products, so it will begin charging for them next April.

If the petition receives 25,000 signatures by Dec. 14, White House staff will review it, ensure that it’s sent to the appropriate policy experts, and issue an official response.

The first person to sign the petition was Radek Wyrzykowski, president of IMC Club International. The club issued this statement about the new charges: “IMC Club International Inc. strongly opposes the FAA’s announcement that it will begin charging for NOS chart downloads that were previously free. The new policy will start beginning April 5, 2012. This means charging fees to companies for downloads and no longer allowing individuals to access them at all. As of April 5, only those with distribution contracts with Aeronav will be able to download the data. This action will put a severe financial burden on flight instructors, pilots and students. It will affect small aviation safety material distribution companies like ForeFlight. Only large aviation corporations will be able to offset these expenses. This policy will have serious and wide ranging implications for the general aviation economy as it will restrict access to basic safety and proficiency materials.

“Besides its immediate impact on aviation safety, this FAA action will set a sad and dangerous precedent for the future of aviation in the United States. It will open the door to imposing future additional charges such as weather briefings, calls to ATC while enroute, and formerly free usage of the ATC system.

“During these tough financial times, where student pilot enrollments are already drastically reduced, one has to ask the simple question: How many flight instructors, students and pilots will have extra funds to cover additional expenses? Pilot safety is at risk. Forcing the general aviation community, the very backbone of aviation safety, to incur additional expenses will surely lead to less proficiency, poorly educated pilots and will drastically compromise the safety of aviation.”

Comments

The comments I have read here make sense even thought they are on both sides of the issue. Most here make sense. I have been buying my hard copy charts forever.Â Maybe a compromise can be reached. The charts we all should be buying should be accessed by pilots for a fee to download on their GPS systems. This way everyone wins. The pilot gets greater safety of flight and the government gets paid for their work as long as the cost is reasonable. Therefore, no one gets a free ride. Just my 2-cents.

I heavily use digital sectionals etc. I already pay for GPS data for my 696 and WILL NOT be paying for sectionals. Im sure i’ll find them on a torrent site and/or take the risks associated with flying using out of date information.

I am still NOT cool with downloading charts to an electronic device. I like to have physical paper charts that I can write Â and highlight on. I don’t trust my printer to the resolution I demand. I don’t own an iPAD…and I wouldn’t use it for aviation. I am very cool with my knew board and my paper sectional. If the government EVER decided to demand electronic charts…they can go ahead and BUY ME AN IPAD!!Â

READ THE ARTICLE.Â You will NOT BE ALLOWED TO BUY THEM.Â Only COMPANIES will now be allowed to download charts from the FAA.

If you’re too lazy to read the article and appreciate what it’s telling you, then you should be too lazy to comment.Â This is why crap like this gets pulled: People berate their fellow victims instead of standing up for themselves and demanding better.

And by the way, the FAA DID chart for downloadable charts when they appeared a few years ago.Â They were $1.50 each.Â Nobody would have had a problem with that continuing, but they suddenly made them free.

Restore the $1.50 fee and let’s move on, but denying the public access to government data is OBVIOUSLY WRONG.

Consider what the poor people in Hawaii must do.Â They must 1) download each and every procedure, DP, or STAR, then print it out on their own ink and paper, then cut the chars to size to fit in loose leaf chart holders.Â As it is, this takes hours, every 56 day chart cycle.Â This inconvenience is free.Â Now, this inconvenience will be for a fee, and for individuals cannot even do that under the proposal.Â So why the heck don’t we just buy loose-leaf charts from the FAA?Â Because guess what, for Hawaii they don’t exist!!!!Â The FAA does not publish IA/DP/STAR charts in loose leaf for Hawaii.

The link to the aboveÂ petition ended up in a dead end when I got to the White House web site, and couldn’t find the petition there, so I went to the one mentioned in one of the posts below : : www.change.org/petition…Â and signed it instead. There are more signers there as well

I’d guess that general aviation pilots who download approach plates and use electronic charts and maps are the same ones who purchased paper charts and plates before they were available online.Â Shouldn’t the decrease in consumption for the paper products allow the FAA to transfer funds for making charts available digitally?Â Compared to printing and distribution, the comparative costs of providing them online should be minimal.Â

(And if a book of paper approach plates costs $5.25 and there are hundreds of approaches, I’d sure hope the price of downloading a single digital approach plate would be no more than a couple pennies!)

A couple of pennies is absolutely correct!Â Web site costs are EXTREMELY low, and I know this because I am in the industry.Â You can support a site with millions of users for only a couple hundred dollars a month.

#2 It doesn’t say Â YOU CAN’T BUY CHARTS. (where did you read that you can’t buy charts???)Â

“The Aeronautical Navigational Products Directorate (Aeronav), which currently makes the latest charts and other navigational products available online for free, says it has to recover the costs associated with developing and hosting the products, so it will begin CHARGING for them next April”.

Get real, guys; the alternative may be that the FAA stops providing the service at all, and we all go back to paper.Â Perhaps AOPA could work out an arrangement with the FAA whereby the service is provided as a membership benefit, butÂ to expect the taxpayers to pick up the tab is ludicrous.

The problem isn’t charging a minor fee to recoup costs.Â The problem is denying the products to the public:

“This means charging fees to companies for downloads and no longer allowing individuals to access them at all.”

The FAA used to charge $1.50 per download for these charts.Â That was fine.

It’s surprising that in 2011, people don’t understand how digital “products” work.Â The downloadable charts are simply giant TIFF files of the paper charts.Â The images for those paper charts must be prepared for printing in the first place, and you can be sure that they’re prepared digitally.Â The process of creating a TIFF file from them is essentially free, and only has to be done once per chart.Â Paying a couple bucks per chart for bandwidth and system maintenance is totally reasonable.Â I don’t think anyone is arguing otherwise.

This is yet another case of the agency that’s supposed to regulate an industry actually working for it.

In the grand tradition that brought you the Jeppesen Monopoly on international Charts and Data, the government is doing it again. Â For those who don’t remember, it used to be that the Defense Department data file containing chart and NavData (known as the “DAFIF) used to be in the public domain, i.e. downloadable by anyone.

Then, in the name of “security” the congress was convinced that it should be “restricted” information and small avionics companies who were making inroads toward competing with Jeppesen were summarily put out the the international flight data business.

But we are much safer now because access to the worldwide NavData is restricted.

Now the only terrorists who can access that data are the ones who have $12,000 to pay Jeppesen for it.

Shame on the FAA and shame on our government.

It’s a bunch of nonsense and it will make charts and NavData even more expensive and we will have less recourse because of the extremely limited options for suppliers.

Now the only terrorists who can access that data are the ones who have $12,000 to pay Jeppesen for it.—-WRONG.Â
Go to your nearest FBO and buy your old paper charts. Those don’t run out of batteries and you can write on them.Â